Abstract

In a paper published in this volume of WES Paul Brook suggests the need to strongly defend Hochschild's emotional labour concept, as it is claimed that I threaten it with extinction with the development of a new typology of emotion management in the workplace. This article seeks to reply to Brook's core concerns and deal with issues of substance about the phenomena Brook and I are both interested in. Mainly, how do we conceptualise emotional labour and work, and how might that fit into labour process analysis? In response to the misgivings of Brook, the discussion will reveal why and how there is a need to analytically develop the idea of emotional labour, that the typology of emotion management in the workplace (Bolton, 2005a) offers a nuanced explanatory framework, and that labour process analysis (LPA) is its theoretical home.